Posts Tagged ‘market’

TL;DR: Valve takes steps against the phishing and pirating industries; news at 11. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Previously, I blogged in this space about changes Steam made to your trading options, which were made to combat virtual item piracy. Yesterday, Valve further restricted trading options as well as the marketability of newly-dropped items. Below are the changes in a was-versus-now format.

Trading items with a Steam Friend (and one/both of you are not using Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator)

Was:

1 day hold for trades to Steam Friends you friended over a year ago

3 day hold for Steam Friends friended more recently

Now:

1 day hold for trades to Steam Friends you friended over a year ago

15 day hold for Steam Friends friended more recently

Trading items with a Steam Friend (and both are using the Mobile Authenticator)

Was: no holds

Now: no holds

Steam says that 95% of traders now use the Mobile Authenticator to expedite their trades (before the December client update, very few users used it). So using the Mobile Authenticator is becoming the new legit standard for traders of valuable Steam virtual items.

Why a 15-day hold? Steam says that less frequent users “need more time” to learn and respond to their compromised accounts. (Been hacked? Contact Steam here.)

Note: Games that you buy (or receive from other users as a gift or trade) that you assign to your gift inventory still begin a 30-day cooldown period before you can trade/gift it on to someone else. If you want to buy a game for someone else to play immediately, gift it to that person at the moment of purchase.

Putting your items on the Steam Market (not using the Mobile Authenticator)

Was: no hold

Now: 15 day hold before the item is listed

Did you pull a nifty new cosmetic weapon that you want to Market? Well, if you’re not using the Mobile Authenticator, you have to wait fifteen days for the item to hit the Market.

“But wait–don’t you have to input the price beforehand? …and isn’t it likely for the demand to change before your item lists? …and for you to change the price, you’ll have to re-list the item, and then it’s held for another two weeks?” Probably.

Steam Ends Duplication Policy

Steam will no longer restore a player’s hacked account by creating duplicates of missing items. You can argue your own case as to why; I said my piece after the previous change.

Please note that the above changes begin on Wednesday, March 9th. Expect a Steam Client update sometime that day.

ICYMI: A previous Steam Client patch now prevents you from starting/receiving a chat (text) message in Steam from users who are not friended, currently playing in a server with you, or currently joining a group chatroom with you.

[N] Obey

(start of Valve blogpost)

Recently we walked through our thinking on account security and trading [http://store.steampowered.com/news/19618/], and introduced some new tools for users to protect their accounts. Now that we’ve had some time to gather data, we’ll be making a few more changes to account security, market transactions, and our account restoration process.

Below are the changes that will take place on March 9th. If you are already protected by the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator (or if you add the security feature to your account today), the first two points below will not impact you:

Trade hold duration will be increased to 15 days (for long-time Steam friends the duration will remain 1 day)

Listing on the Steam Community Market will have a hold of 15 days before an item can be sold

Steam Support will no longer restore items that have left accounts following a successful trade or market transaction (a process that previously created duplicates of original items)

To help understand these changes, we wanted to walk you through the results we’ve seen so far and our reasoning behind these next steps.

First, it’s worth revisiting our goals behind the two main ways customers interact with in-game economies on Steam: Trading and the Steam Community Market. Our primary goal for Trading is to allow customers to easily exchange items with their friends. Our goal for the Steam Community Market is to provide customers with a way to sell any unwanted goods to other players. Both systems work well for these purposes, but they can be a source of pain if the security of your account is ever compromised.

Account and Item Theft

In December we took steps to improve account security by adding more security features, including the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator and trade holds.

Since then, we’ve seen lots of users adopting the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator (two-factor authentication) for trade and market confirmations, and now roughly 95% of daily trades use the mobile authenticator, with trade volumes as high as ever. The authenticator is the best tool that users have to protect their accounts, and the fastest and most secure way to trade items.

Trade Holds

For users who have yet to transition to the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, trade holds provide a way to continue to exchange items. Items in a trade hold are held by Steam for a period of time before delivery. This allows users whose accounts have been compromised to quickly cancel any fraudulent trades to recover their items. Trade holds are effective, but unfortunately the current three-day hold fails to protect users who log in less frequently and who need more time to identify a problem. So we’ll be adjusting the system to accommodate the majority of customers by increasing trade holds to 15 days.

If you’re exchanging items with a friend, and you’ve been friends for more than a year, don’t worry – the trade hold duration is still one day.

Market Holds

Trade holds have been successful, but until now they’ve been limited to trades. If the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator was not enabled on a user’s account, it was still possible for a hacker to quickly liquidate a user’s inventory through the Steam Community Market. To further protect users who haven’t enabled the authenticator, holds will now also apply when you list items on the Steam Community Market. Market listing (like trades) will still be instantaneous if you’re using the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator.

Item Duplication

Since the last account security update, we’ve made significant progress in protecting accounts. In addition to significantly increasing the size of Steam Support to improve response times, individual accounts protected by the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator on a separate device turned out to be even more effective than we’d hoped. For customers who have yet to add the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, trade holds have been helpful in keeping items secure, and we expect that the added duration and extension of holds to the Steam Community Market will further improve security.

Our work isn’t finished, but we’ve seen enough progress in account security to finally address an old problem: item duplication. Currently, if an account is compromised and items have been lost through a successful trade or market transaction, we would manually restore the items, creating duplicates of the original items in the process. That process of manual restoration and duplication has the negative side effect of changing an item’s scarcity – as more copies of the item are created, the value of every other similar item is reduced. In addition, it created a method by which users could be rewarded for faking account hijacks.

While we’ll continue to assist users with the recovery of their account if they encounter an issue, beginning March 9th we will no longer be manually restoring items that have left the account due to a successful trade or market transaction.

Balance

There’s a delicate balance between account security and the convenience of interacting with the market or trade. Any time we make changes, there’s the risk of significant disruption. We recognize that today’s changes will be inconvenient for users who have yet (or are unable) to use the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator. But if you’re a high volume trader (who our data shows is likely using the authenticator already), or a trader who likes to exchange items with friends, these changes won’t really affect you at all. We believe these steps are necessary to ensure that accounts are made more secure, that users are empowered to identify and solve problems, and that the economic systems enjoyed by millions of customers are not compromised by people with malicious intent.

Account security is an issue that affects everyone, and we hope this post has helped to explain our goals and reasoning as we move forward. Please continue to provide your feedback and account security ideas in the Steam forums and elsewhere on the web.

News Bits

The Gun Mettle Campaign Pass has been removed from the Mann Co. Store. The Gun Mettle Season ends September 30th.

Have you read TF2 Comics #5 yet? Published on Aug 31, it follows Miss Pauling as she continues to recruit the nine mercenaries, following the orders of the Administrator in its typical nonsensical fashion.

With the rise of the Steam Market to facilitate currency trading, perhaps fewer users bother to trade for buds, although plenty of users still desire the accessory. Be aware of this, if you’ve have a standing sell price for an unusual valued in buds.

With each patch, the price will spike into the $2.90 ranged on the Market, then slowly fall back toward $2.50 once more. Users without Steam Funds generally trading with a key plus some metal. Also, Powerhouse cases are trading for about $0.15, and Concealed Killer cases for $0.06.

As I observed before: Factory New is worth five to ten times as much as other grades, and is what collectors are keeping.

Since Gun Mettle ends September 30th, these weapons will be Limited and no longer obtainable afterward. It is not known whether the cases can be opened, or if the weapons can still Traded Up afterward. Trade Ups have removed a lot of weapons from the Market; few Grade 5 or Grade 6 weps are even for sale on the Market.

1. Gun Mettle Trade Up

Oh, great. You finally finished a frustrating contract of a class you’ve not very skilled at, and earned another low-tier weapon you already have. That’s no fun. (Look at the top image of this blogpost–Scout has way too many Backcountry Blasters!)

Now, you can do something with your extra, unwanted Gun Mettle weapons. You can take ten Gun Mettle weapons of the same tier, and convert them to one random weapon of the next highest tier. Right-click a Gun Mettle weapon from your backpack and choose “Mann Co. Trade Up”.

A postcard pop-up will appear. The first weapon locks in what tier of weapons you can then conveniently choose from to fill out the remainder of the “coupon”.

Click on “Mail In”, click on the “Stamp” button, and then Mann Co.’s super shipping service will drop you a random weapon of the next tier. (If you need to see this process in more detail, see this post on Imgur.)

Trade Up’s Effect on the Market

Three weeks before this writing, I blogged in this space about the current prices of various TF2 items. Well, being able to trade in Gun Mettle weapons should surely have an effect on their value in the Market. In the 24 hours since the launch of this patch, here is what I have observed regarding Gun Mettle weapons:

Tier 1 “Civilian” weapon prices are staying the same.

Each weapon has over 200 copies of each wear grade for sale, and the upgrade of ten $0.05 items to potentially another $0.10 item hasn’t yet affected the prices of Tier 1 weapons.

Tier 2 “Freelance” and Tier 3 “Mercenary” weapons are spiking up.

Users are buying up the cheapest Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, and Tier 5 weapons they can find, ostensibly to combine with their own extras and convert them to a higher-tier weapon. There are now fewer Battle-Scarred and Well-Worn versions of these weapons left for sale on the Market than before, since those had been the cheapest.

For example, a non-Strange “Forest Fire” Tier 3 flamethrower had been trading for roughly $0.06 to $0.35, depending on its wear. Forest Fire is now selling from $0.15 to $0.55, or effectively double what it cost before (see image above). Also, there are only dozens left on the Market, instead of hundreds previously. This tells us:

Some Tier 4 and Tier 5 weapons have also spiked, and some versions are becoming rare.

(Updated Aug 30) For a couple of days after this patch, you couldn’t buy a Tier 5 “Sudden Flurry” stickiebomb launcher for less than US$2, whereas three weeks ago the higher-wear varieties for selling for well under $1. Now, the value has fallen back to about $1 in most cases. (Remember, previously Tier 5s and Tier 6s were only available by unlocking Cases by key.) Users are buying them up to trade in for a Tier 6 weapon. Meanwhile, the Factory New version are staying roughly the same price, since those are the versions that people want to buy and keep. As a result:

“Factory New” weapons, as well as the other grades, are becoming more commonplace on the Market as users are selling weapons they received while trying to earn something else. Some higher-wear Tier 5s are increasing in price as a few users craft a Tier 6, while some are slowly falling as supply increases.

Now, you should consider whether you want to sell a mid-tier item–while demand is increasing for those buying them up, and while the supply is still there for players to trade up items–or keep it in the chance of it being rare later. Or ignore all of this, and go kill some fools on 2Fort with your fancy weapons :p

Remember: All Gun Mettle weapons are Limited, and they will no longer drop after September 30, 2015. Meanwhile, the TF2 community continues to grow–especially with new players–so the demand for many of these weapons could rise after Gun Mettle ends.

2. Gun Mettle Cosmetic Cases (aka Crate #95)

The Gun Mettle Cosmetic Case is a special crate that will drop only for Campaign Coin holders and, according to the TF2 Blog, will only drop once a week (and a random chance of it doing so). Just assume that it is a rare crate, but you still have to buy a Gun Mettle Cosmetic Key to open it.

(As of August 30th, the cases are selling for about US$2 on the Market, and I expect that price to fall this week.)

There are 16 possible items in a #95 Gun Mettle Cosmetic Case. All of these items, as well as the Cases themselves, are Marketable and tradable. They are not yet craftable or dropping in the Item Drop system.

Steam has made some changes to the client software in an attempt to reduce the number of phisher/hacker accounts. Rest assured that the following doesn’t apply to you if you have ever spent at least US$5 lifetime at the Steam Store.

A limited user is any Steam account that has not yet spent at least US$5.00 at the Steam Store; such a user is similar to a universal free-to-play account. Limited User accounts have had many of the functions of the Steam client removed–mostly to prevent phishers and hackers from creating throwaway Steam accounts. Among the features that are now disabled for Limited User accounts include:

Sending friend invites

Voting or posting on anything in Steam Workshop, Greenlight, or Reviews for a game/software

Opening text chat windows with another user or groups

Gaining Steam Profile Levels and Steam Trading Cards

Participating in the Steam Market

The above restrictions are lifted if the user buys a game(s) of at least $5 value in the Steam Store for yourself or as a gift, buys at least $5 worth of Steam Wallet funds, or adds a prepurchased Steam card to the account.

Limited User accounts can still play free-to-play games on Steam, promotional trial games like Free Weekends, receive and play gift games from another person, trade games and/or in-game items, and activate promotional CD keys (like from hardware companies or a Humble Bundle). However, none of these actions will earn full user access; at least $5 of funds and/or content must be purchased from Steam (or a Steam card from a third-party, and then applied) to remove the Limited User restrictions. Again, receiving a game(s) or in-game items as gifts will not remove the restrictions.

It’s been a slow news cycle for the TF2 world. So in surfing around for something to write about, I made some observations about the trade value of some TF2 items. If you haven’t traded anything in a while, you may or may not learn something here:

1. The Price of Keys is Too Damn High

Keys are about 14 refined metal. Each. Yes. FOURTEEN.

Yes, they went up to 7-8 refined last summer. Yes.

You may remember before that they were 4 refined, and then 3 refined before that.

Actually, this price has stabilized, since keys had spiked to 17 refined last Christmas (12/25/14). You can contemplate why that would be. See for yourself here.

Which means in Steam Market Value, 1 refined is worth roughly 15 cents. And while a Mann Co. Crate Key is purchased for US$2.49, the price has bounced over the last year from $2.20 to $2.45 depending on demand.

Keys aren’t moving in price; demand for metal is going down. When newer items become craftable, demand for metal will go back up some because people will buy metal and hats to try to craft them. The “End of the Line” and Smissmass 2014 items are not yet craftable, so of course demand for keys is spiking. Naughty 2014 Crate Keys are almost $3 in trade value; people without the money to buy them direct are trading items to acquire these keys.

2. Varieties of Botkiller Weapons Are Not Priced By Tour Difficulty

Now that the chance of dropping an Australium weapon has been spread to all Mann Up Tours, there are more Botkiller weapons that ever on the market. This means that in most cases, a common BK weapon is cheaper than a standard strange version in many cases.

3. Got Any of This Rare Loot?

If you’re not playing TF2 anymore, but you want Steam Wallet funds to buy new games, you can always sell these items on the Market! I listed a few oddball items here; it is always worth checking backpack.tf or the like to make sure a random item doesn’t happen to be rarer than you think it is.